Building a Reading List Worth Sharing

Anyone can publish twenty links in ten minutes, and readers can usually tell. They save the page, feel slightly improved, and never open any of it. The list people actually work through is a different object: shorter, more opinionated, with a sentence beside each entry explaining what it is doing there.

Lists like that are worth making. On any network of essays, older pieces slip out of sight as new ones arrive, and a good list brings them back in front of someone who needs them. It is also a generous kind of writing, because most of the words you are recommending belong to other people.

Start with a reader and a question

“Essays I loved” is a fine thing to keep for yourself. As a public list it has a problem: nothing can ever be left out of it, since anything you loved qualifies. A narrower brief does half of the choosing for you.

Compare “the best writing about family” with “five essays for someone about to write about a parent for the first time”. The second one has a reader in it, and that reader has a problem. You can now look at a wonderful piece and say, correctly, that it does not belong.

Before gathering anything, try finishing this sentence: this list is for someone who ___ and wants to ___. If you cannot fill the blanks, what you have is a collection. Keep it, by all means. Our note on building a reading habit suggests parking the long list somewhere out of sight, and that is a good place to go shopping when a real question turns up.

Give every piece a job

Quality gets a piece onto the shortlist. What gets it onto the list is having something to do that nothing else there does.

Take that list about writing on a parent, as an imagined example. It might want one essay that is tender without going soft, one that is angry and still fair, one that faces the ethics of describing someone who cannot answer back, and one short, practical piece about where to begin. If two tender essays both make the cut, they are competing for one chair. Keep the better one, even if the other is by a writer you admire more.

A few habits help at this stage:

• Reread before you include. Memory flatters. The essay that rearranged your thinking years ago may read thin now, and you would rather find that out before a stranger does.
• Go past the obvious names. Your reader can find the piece everybody quotes. One or two discoveries are what make a list feel like it came from a person.
• Let in something you argue with. A piece you partly disagree with, flagged as such, tells readers you were looking for the best thinking on the question and not only for allies.
• Be open about connections. If a writer on the list is a friend, or the piece is your own, say so in the note. One of your own is usually the limit.
• Check that it can be read. Open every link in a private window. If a piece has gone behind a paywall, tell the reader or choose another.

Write the note that says why it is there

The annotation is the part only you can write. Titles and links are available to anyone; your reason for choosing is the reason to read your list and not someone else’s. It is also where most lists give up. Here is the usual version, invented for illustration:

A beautiful, must-read essay on grief.

That sentence could sit beside a thousand pieces. Now the same imaginary entry, with a reason attached:

Read this one for its structure. The hospital story runs backwards, and you stop noticing until the last page. It starts slowly, so give it until the second section before deciding. I think the ending is too neat; see whether you agree.

The second note is longer by only a little, and it does far more. A useful annotation usually contains one or two of these:

• what this piece does that the others on the list do not;
• who should read it, or when, and who can safely skip it;
• an honest warning about length, a slow start or an argument that has aged;
• the place where you part company with the writer.

Avoid summarising. A summary gives away the piece and spares the reader the trip, and the writer you meant to help loses out. Point at what is worth noticing and stop. Two sentences will often do, and four is plenty.

Now and then a note refuses to stay small. You sit down to explain one entry and find a whole disagreement pouring out. Take that as good news and move it to a draft of its own: our piece on writing a thoughtful response covers what to do next. Your list can link to the result later.

Keep it short enough to finish

We would suggest five to seven pieces for most lists. There is nothing magic in the number. It is simply a size a reader can picture finishing over a weekend, and that picture is often what gets them to open the first link.

Length also forces honesty. Once the list is full, adding something means removing something, and that small cost makes you ask whether the new favourite is really better or merely newer. Be suspicious of the “also worth reading” section at the bottom. It usually holds everything you could not bring yourself to cut, and it quietly undoes the choosing you did above it.

Think about order while you trim. Most important first sounds sensible, yet the most important piece is sometimes the hardest. Open with whatever is most inviting, so that the reader gets a win early, then let the demanding one come third. Finish on a piece that sends them back to their own work with something to try.

Frame it, credit it, keep it alive

A short introduction is all the frame a list needs: who it is for, what you deliberately left out, and any bias a reader should know about. “These are mostly personal essays, because that is what I read” takes one line and earns a lot of trust.

Name every writer in full and link to the piece itself, not to a homepage. Then consider telling them. A brief response under their story, saying what you valued and that you included it, is usually welcome, and it fits our guidelines as long as it is really about that story. Responses are read by moderators before they appear, so it may take a little while to show up.

Finally, put a date on it. “Last checked in March” is a small sentence with a large effect, because it tells readers that someone is still looking after the page. When you come back, test the links and reread your notes. If your mind has changed about a piece, replace it or say so in the note. A list that only grows drifts back towards the pile you started by avoiding.

Picture a friend asking what they should read before starting a difficult piece of writing. You would not send them twenty links. You would send three or four, with a line about each and maybe a warning about the second one. That message is most of the way to a good reading list, and all that remains is to publish it where the next person can find it.